Electoral Panorama / Panorama Electoral

The introduction in Scotland of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system of proportional representation (PR) for local elections - previously carried out by plurality voting in single-member wards - has brought significant changes in the makeup of local councils following last Thursday's vote.

In all, the Scottish National Party (SNP) won 363 council seats (doubling its 2003 total of 181 seats), while Labour dropped from 509 to 348 seats (a loss of 161). Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats won 166 seats (nine fewer than in 2003), the Conservatives 143 (a gain of 20) and the Greens eight (having previously held none); other parties and independent candidates captured the remaining 194 seats (for an overall loss of 40). Labour now controls only two of Scotland's thirty-two local councils; three are controlled by independents or others, and in the rest no party has overall control.

In the capital city of Edinburgh, where Labour had secured in 2003 a narrow overall majority of two seats with 27.4% of the vote, the results of the 2007 local election were as follows:

Scottish Liberal Democrats - 42,657 votes (22.0%), 17 seats
Scottish Labour Party - 44,489 votes (22.9%), 15 seats
Scottish National Party - 39,431 votes (20.3%), 12 seats
Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party - 42,840 votes (22.1%), 11 seats
Scottish Green Party - 15,959 votes (8.2%), 3 seats
Scottish Socialist Party - 2,077 votes (1.1%), no seats
Solidarity - 1,651 votes (0.9%), no seats
Others - 4,902 votes (2.5%), no seats

Voter turnout in the election stood at 58.3%, significantly up from 51.8% in 2003.

The main beneficiaries of STV in Edinburgh were the Scottish National Party, which won no council seats in 2003 despite having polled 15.6% of the vote, and the Greens, who had not taken part in previous council elections. This time around, the distribution of council seats stood closely in proportion to the parties' electoral following, although the Liberal Democrats won the largest number of seats with slightly fewer votes than Labour or the SNP. Both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives had lower shares of the vote than in 2003 - when they won 26.9% and 24.5%, respectively - but the former gained two seats and the latter lost an equal number of councillors.

Meanwhile, the outcome of the 2007 local election in Glasgow - Scotland's largest city, where Labour had won 71 of 79 council seats in 2003 - was as follows:

Scottish Labour Party - 81,393 votes (43.2%), 45 seats
Scottish National Party - 46,185 votes (24.5%), 22 seats
Scottish Liberal Democrats - 15,324 votes (8.1%), 5 seats
Scottish Green Party - 12,183 votes (6.5%), 5 seats
Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party - 14,217 votes (7.5%), 1 seat
Solidarity - 9,083 votes (4.8%), 1 seat
Scottish Socialist Party - 4,385 votes (2.3%), no seats
Others - 5,606 votes (3.0%), no seats

Voter turnout in Glasgow's local poll was 44.4%.

A common misconception about proportional systems in general and STV in particular is that PR prevents a single party from winning an absolute majority of seats in an elective body: that is usually but not always the case, as shown by the outcome of the election in Glasgow, where Labour retained a much-reduced (but nonetheless significant) overall majority. Meanwhile, the SNP secured council representation fairly in proportion to its voting strength (going from 3 to 22 seats), as did the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

Despite polling more votes than the Greens (and nearly as many as the Liberal Democrats), the Conservatives won only one council seat in Glasgow, partly because their relative low poll was evenly distributed - in many cases well below the STV quota (25% in wards with three seats, 20% in four-seat wards) - and in terms of first preferences Tory candidates were usually ranked beyond the number of seats to be filled. By comparison, the Liberal Democrat and Green vote tended to concentrate in a few wards, and all but one of the councillors elected by these two parties were among the top three or four candidates in their respective first preference counts.

Just as important, Conservative candidates polled comparatively few second and successive preference votes - hardly surprising, given that the Tories lie well to the right of the city's political center of gravity, and stand fairly isolated from the rest of the parties. In fact, the single Conservative winner came within five votes of losing to a Green candidate, despite having a substantial first preference lead over the latter.

Only three elected councillors (one Green, one Solidarity and one SNP) had first preference rankings outside the number of seats in their wards. All of them defeated better-placed Labour candidates, in no small measure because in all three instances Labour put more candidates than it could get elected on its share of the vote. Moreover, both the Green and Solidarity candidates in question polled a sizable first preference vote, while the SNP nominee was the beneficiary of a large surplus transfer from a fellow party candidate who had topped the poll in his ward.